Data Analysis and Business Modeling with Microsoft Excel

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!! Very Useful
Review: I love this book. This Book is a must for anyone who wants to learn how to use Excel to perform Data Analysis and Business modeling. I learned alot from this book. Winston shows us how to use Excel functions and shows us with examples. Plenty of examples and answers provided with the CD. This is a very good "foundational" book. You should also check out the book by Jackson and Staunton "Advanced modeling in finance using Excel and VBA". A book by Sengupta "Financial Modeling using Excel and VBA" is also worth looking at. I own all 3 books

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!! Very Useful
Review: I love this book. This Book is a must for anyone who wants to learn how to use Excel to perform Data Analysis and Business modeling. I learned alot from this book. Winston shows us how to use Excel functions and shows us with examples. Plenty of examples and answers provided with the CD. This is a very good "foundational" book. You should also check out the book by Jackson and Staunton "Advanced modeling in finance using Excel and VBA". A book by Sengupta "Financial Modeling using Excel and VBA" is also worth looking at. I own all 3 books

Rating:
Summary: good for mba students learning excel
Review: I think the book provides many good tips on learning how to use the many tools excel provides a business analyst.

Rating:
Summary: Great Resource
Review: I totally agree with renner 93, this book is a huge waste of my money as I was expecting to follow the CD samples that where toted so heavily on the book's back page as being part of the complete package. If they can correct this CD and supply a correct version to those already purchased, this may be a good book. But with the terriable CD mistakes, I rate this DOUBLE THUMBS DOWN! AND THE MIDDLE FINGER TO THE EDITOR for not doing his job.

Rating:
Summary: Great Resource
Review: It could possibly be a 5 star. It's great for those who need it to supplement knowledge obtained "on the job". I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: CD Rom All Wrong
Review: The book iitself is good and could learn a great deal with a correct companion cd. But you can't include a CD in which all the problems and examples in the book differ from the cd. As with all software-learning books with accompaning cd's, it's crucial that you can perfom the necessary problems and examples correctly. This is not the case with Data Analysis and Business Modeling with Microsoft Excel by Wayne L. Winston. Small errors such as the cd Excel sheets being one row off from the book examples to missing data and incorrectly named companies (example: Cisco on the cd vs. Microsoft in the book) to large errors such as beginning of the month totals in sales examples being non-existent and data completely missing (in the Cisco/Microsoft example.) And these all occur w/in the first three chapters! Had the cd jived with the book, this would be a great resource. Since it is nearly impossible to do the activities on the cd, I rated this book poorly and will be taking it back and looking at other data analysis/modeling books.

Rating:
Summary: CD has MANY, MANY mistakes....
Review: The idea behind this book is great.
The book introduces and expands on many different 'useful' formulas and tools included within Excel.
The problems at the end of each chapter allows the reader to use what was just learned in developing spreadsheets to solve realistic accounting problems.
Even the 'above average' user of Excel, I believe, will learn from this book.
The CD even has an electronic version of the book, so you don't have to carry the book around everywhere.
The main problem: the CD STINKS !!!! It has MANY, MANY errors.
From forgetting to take into account given growth rates detailed in a problem (therefore yielding incorrect answers) to just plain sloppy copying of sheets (forgetting to delete the drawings and numbers not pertinent to the current sheet).
As said in a prior review, if an updated CD were to become available, with the CORRECT ANSWERS on it, this would be a definite 5 star.
(This said, perhaps finding the errors on the CD could be a means of developing your spreadsheets skills):)

Rating:
Summary: For once I have found something I can use.
Review: Usually I avoid Microsoft publications like the plague. The world digs deep enough into its pocket to fund Bill's lifestyle as it is. However work demands have lead me into using areas of Excel I have rarely used. I found this book to be just the one to meet my needs. I like the way the book is organised into short chapters with lots of practical examples. Personally it could have done without the first seven chapters; at this level the reader should know these thoroughly. Nevertheless, there is enough meat in the rest to give me a enough grounding into becoming more proficient in the more "esoteric" areas of Excel.

Rating:
Summary: For once I have found something I can use.
Review: Usually I avoid Microsoft publications like the plague. The world digs deep enough into its pocket to fund Bill's lifestyle as it is. However work demands have lead me into using areas of Excel I have rarely used. I found this book to be just the one to meet my needs. I like the way the book is organised into short chapters with lots of practical examples. Personally it could have done without the first seven chapters; at this level the reader should know these thoroughly. Nevertheless, there is enough meat in the rest to give me a enough grounding into becoming more proficient in the more "esoteric" areas of Excel.